


Left Buried

by anytiemfittness



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, Crime Scenes, Detectives, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, Murder Mystery, Not Beta Read, Other, Reunions, Teen Angst, Unrequited Crush, Violence, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:15:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anytiemfittness/pseuds/anytiemfittness
Summary: Jack hasn't seen August for years, not since high school. However, when Jack is called to a crime scene, they come face to face.Just not in a way either of them would have expected, or wanted for that matter....This is the first chapter in what I hope one day to be a published work. All of the constructive criticism please and thank you.
Relationships: Original Male Character & Original Male Character





	Left Buried

Sweat pools in the base of my neck, accompanying the shiver of my back and the shaking of my gloved hands. I grab one hand with another to keep them both still. It doesn’t work. In fact, I think this might be worse; both hands are shaking together now. I really need to get them under control. I can’t make any mistakes.

He should have left by now, should’ve walked out the back door to the alleyway where his car is parked and locked it behind him. Even his boss has left, her nose stuck up in the air, and her ridiculous necklace bouncing as she walked.

Eventually I see him come out of the building, his headphones in and his head moving to the music. He looks tired but happy. His bleached blonde hair, usually sprayed up to a seemingly weightless point, lies flat and kind of messy on his forehead. I get out of the car, my hands still shaking, and yell his name. He jumps a little at first, startled, but then turns to see where the noise is coming from. When he sees it’s me he smiles.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asks cheerfully. When I don't immediately reply his eyes dart around in confusion his smile falling slightly

“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, like the words have been forced out without my permission. My voice shakes, along with my hands as they curl into fists.  
When he notices the clenching of my gloved hand, his smile falls and his eyes go wide. He’s just surprised at first, before the betrayal sets in, before the fear. He tries to get away, tries to run, but he isn’t fast enough, isn’t strong enough. The first punch hits him in the jaw and he falls to the ground, his face scrunched up and bleeding. immediately I want to take it back, want to undo the action and go home. But its too late for that. when I hit him in the face again, his skull bounces off the concrete, leaving behind a dark red mark on the ground. the sound makes my heart clench, as though grabbed by an invisible hand. he's Dazed but still conscious when he starts to cry, starts to beg me to stop. the tears cut clear tracks through the red.

I hit him in the jaw again and hear the snap of broken bone. He can’t talk now, can't put his face through the motions. He can only moan and groan and whine in pain. He tries to scream for help but can't form the words. He’s louder now, as the hope leaves his eyes, more desperate. My heart races. If he’s loud enough, someone could hear, could come to investigate. I need him to stop, so I grab him by the fringe and slam his head into the ground. he's still crying out, so I do it again and again and again, until The sound of bone hitting the pavement is all I can hear.

I finally stop he is silent and still. I put two of my fingers against his neck to feel for a pulse. He’s still alive, so I take a deep breath, grab him by the fringe and lift his head up of the pavement for what I'm praying will be the last time.

“I’m so sorry.”

...

Jack is lying on his front, asleep with his face pressed into his pillow, and a small dark patch of drool soaking it’s way into the pillowcase. He wakes up to the sound of his alarm, jumping slightly before resting his head down again. He takes one of his arms from underneath his pillow and waves it around in the general direction of his bedside table, searching for his phone. When this shockingly doesn’t work he groans slightly, lifting his head up to rest on his arm and half opening his eyes to search for it. After what seems an age of piercing and monotonous sound he finally finds it and turns off the alarm before looking at the time. The digital display is far too bright for his sleep filled eyes, so he has to blink several times before the blurring of his vision subsides and he can make out the numbers on the screen.

It’s still early, early enough that that he thinks seriously for a moment about lying back down and pulling the covers over his head, before deciding against it. He sits up a little too fast, making himself dizzy for just a second, enough that, when he tries to stand, he sits down again almost instantly. He stays seated on the edge of the bed until the feeling goes away, before getting up, cracking his back and ambling his way towards the kitchen. Just before he arrives there, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. There is a slightly red mark on his left cheek left behind from the creases in his pillowcase, and his dark brown hair is seriously untidy, sticking up in places. He stops for a second to half-heartedly try and press his hair down before a craving for coffee rises up in him and settles in his veins, finally propelling him the last few steps into the kitchen. Calling it a kitchen is perhaps a little generous. it's really nothing much more than a sink and a stove top. he ignores both of these however and beelines straight for the kettle.

It’s while the water is boiling that his phone rings, the sound of his work ringtone filling the space of his small apartment. For a moment he has to decide between his coffee, the water for which has just finished boiling, and his phone, which is still all the way back in his bedroom. Looking wistfully at the newly boiled water in his kettle, he chooses the phone on the off chance that the call might be important. The voice on the other end wakes him up better than coffee ever could.

“Mornin’ Princess,” it says, far too loudly for this early in the morning. The accent is one degree away from Steve Irwin, “got all ya beauty sleep?”

“I got enough of it,” replies Jack through a yawn.

“Yeah, well put your face on and get out here. I’ve got a body to show you.”

Jack moves back over to the kitchen, phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder, and turns the kettle back on. “Got it. Will do.”

“Oh, and Jack…” the voice says, a tad slowly.

“Yes Dave,” Jack says, mimicking the tone.

“Grab us a coffee would ya,” says Dave, ending the call.

As Jack is changing into his work clothes, the kettle having been abandoned for a second time, His phone makes another noise signalling that an address has been texted to him. He picks up his phone on the way out the door.

...

When Jack drives to the crime scene, having picked up a suit from his bedroom floor and half-heartedly tried to tidy his messy brown hair, the sun is only just peeking over the horizon. The rays of sunshine stream right into his eyes, his sunglasses providing only minimal protection from the glare of the early morning. He parks on the side of the road, gets out of his car and crosses the empty street over to an alleyway that has been cordoned off with police tape. Dave is already there, the sunlight reflecting off his bald head. He smiles when he sees Jack, but it’s a grim thing and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Glad you could make it,” says Dave, his voice aiming for jovial but not quite hitting the mark.

“From the way you sounded on the phone I was beginning to worry my coffee would never show up.”

"So what are we looking at?" Jack asks, passing a disposable coffee cup to Dave and nodding in the direction of the body. As soon as he’s asked the question he starts to feel like he doesn’t want to know.

"Um, let's see," says Dave, looking down at the notes he’s resting on his belly, "White male. Probably around early thirties."

"Do we know cause of death?"

"well we're still waiting for the medical examiner to rock up, but I would be really surprised if it didn't turn out that he was beaten to death. There honestly doesn't seem to be much left of him as far as I can see. His jaw is all-"

"yeah, I'd rather just take a look for myself if thats alright?"

“Yeah sure, go on kid. Take a look.”

Jack walks over to where the body lies surrounded by uniformed officers. It's the smell that gets to him first, makes him want to gag. It's The undeniable scent of a corpse that hasn't yet properly started to decompose, the smell of cold shit, burrowing its way into his nasal cavity.

The sight is secondary. He hasn’t had much experience of dead bodies so far; having only just transferred into homicide, so the image still makes his heart feel tight. Even from just the most preliminary of searches he can see that Dave wasn't kidding. The victim's face has been severely bashed in. It's covered in so much blood that it's almost unrecognisable as human. A thin stream of it has run down the victim's face and into an unblinking green eye, collecting slightly in his eyelid before running along the crease of his eye and down the side of his face like a tear. It's an unnerving sight, one that makes Jack incredibly uncomfortable. The other eye is entirely closed shut, the swelling leaving only a small slit between the victim's eyelids where the white shines through. There's a pool of blood on the ground too, some dry, some still wet. It surrounds the victim’s head like a dark red halo.

"Does he have any ID?" asks Jack to no one in particular, tilting his head to the side.

One of the uniformed officers speaks up to answer him, "None that we could find on the body without moving it," says the officer, Liam, who Jack recognises as one of the people he went through his original police training with.

"Any witnesses?"

"No. Well, none that’ve come forward so far, anyway."

"Alright, well we’ll need to find out who works in these buildings. We’ll want to talk to them as soon as we can. I’m going to see what Dave says about it all before the medical exam-,"

He doesn't even finish the sentence before he hears the rumble of an approaching car, the sound incredibly loud over the relative quiet of the early morning. Jack moves away from the body and towards the sound, Watching as a large police van drives up to the scene, stopping just before reaching the police tape. After a moment the engine shuts down, and A tall woman with curly blonde hair steps out of the car, smiling and waving at Jack when she sees him. He returns it with distinctly less enthusiasm. "Morning Jack," the woman says brightly as she walks over to him, completely bypassing Dave, the man actually in charge. She shakes Jack’s hand. "How're you?"

"Well Jen," Jack replies sarcastically, truly not in the mood for small talk, "it has just turned seven O'clock in the morning and instead of having breakfast, like I should be, I'm at the scene of a brutal murder making small talk with you. So my day's going perfectly so far."

"Well excuse me for asking," she replies, her sunny smile having disappeared somewhere between, "having breakfast," and, "brutal murder."

"Sorry," Jack says, apologetic, "it's just way too early in the morning for this kind of shit."

"Yeah," she sighs, "I get that. where's the body?"

"C'mon," said Jack, nodding his head in its general direction, "it's over here."

"Alright, just wait a sec," she says, walking back over to her car and bending over to grab her rubber gloves out of the glove box. Jack stands by patiently while she does this, trying and failing to avert his eyes as she bends over. She hands him a pair.

As they make their way over to it, Jennifer notices Liam and waves to him. He waves back shyly, before Dave barks an order at him and he jumps slightly, before getting to work.

They reach the body and Jenifer kneels down next to it, looking at it intently. "You probably figured this out already by now but, from an initial viewing it would seem that the cause of death is blunt force trauma to the head," she said before lifting up the victims head. "Judging by the amount of damage around the back, I'd say he had it slammed into the ground a fair few times. And with quite a lot of force too." She looked at Jack who was kneeling next to her, listening intently. "Whoever did this was strong."

"Or really, really angry," Jack replied.

"Or that. Or both." A short silence passes between them as they both think. Jack is the first to speak, breaking the silence.

"Well now that you've taken your first look at him," he said, "I imagine we can finally turn him over, see if there's any I.D. on him."

"Yeah um, sure. D'you want a hand with that?"

"Thanks."

With Jack holding on to the victim's shoulders and Jen grabbing him by the hips, they manage to roll him onto his front. In one of his back pockets is an obvious bulge containing his wallet. Jack reaches in gingerly taking out the wallet and opening it up, making an effort not to touch the body any more than he absolutely needs to.

The first thing Jack notices is the picture on the guy’s driver's license. A slim, almost pretty face looks back at him with bright green eyes and bleached blonde, almost white hair gelled and sprayed into an artfully messy point. The face is familiar to him in a way that he just can't put his finger on before he reads the name on the card. August Nowak. Jack closes his eyes for a second.

"Shit," he mumbles under his breath.

"What is it?"

"I know this guy."

"Shit."


End file.
